New Kid in the Block

[chhabi19]

Hi,

I am new to the forum and need suggestions.

Background: I had a 10 gallon tank for 6 months which was a gift to my wife on her birthday. Now I am hooked and she is pissed. I recently sold that tank and upgraded to a 55 gallon (2 months running). Details are in my signature.

Anyways, my goal is to achieve a low maintenance tank with a few discus (I love them) and plants. I would like to check water parameters weekly and do a water change at the same time. I am confused and overwhelmed with all the details in this forum, plantedtank.com and on the internet in general. Therefore, here are my questions:

1)Is it possible to have healthy discus with lots of plants, weekly water change and no CO2?
2)Should my first discus (2-3) be fries or grown ups?
3)Do I need fertilizers for my plants? I bought Seichem Excel and when I dosed a couple of times (recommended doses), couple of my mollies started getting ick. So, I stopped and did few daily water changes. They are looking better now.
4)I have hair or beard or some kind of algae in my tank. They were attached to my plant leaves and look like dark grey fur. I cut down lighting from 8 hrs to 7 hrs, did water change, trimmed some leaves and they are still present. First I thought they were flowers of some sort.
5)I have ph and ammonia test kit. What other test strips or kits do I need to buy for my desired low-tech goal?

My ammonia is 0 and ph is around 6.4-6.5. Temp is 82. Please advise. I don't want to buy discus before knowing more and resolving my current issues. Thanks.

[underwaterforest]

Welcome to Simply, chhabi19!

I am also a newcomer here, but I have been garnering lots of info on this board so I may be able to help some. If you are looking for bare minimum maintenance you probably need to get larger adult sized discus since they require less food and therefore less water changes.

It is possible to have weekly water changes if you have a heavily planted tank to help absorb the fish wastes in the water column. I'm not too sure how good the plants will absorb the nutrients without co2 enrichment but you can always setup a DIY Co2 reactor out of a old plastic soda bottle and some sugar and yeast. Seachem's excel works good for Co2 but I still think that the DIY yeast method is better.

A reason you may be getting excess hair algae growth maybe that your nutrients are out of whack in your tank, e.g. your nitrates or phosphates are high in your tank. A test kit can help you determine what you need to add or get rid of. Tests for plant tanks are KH (Co2), GH (hardness), Fe (Iron), No3-(Nitrate). Another problem you may be having is too much or too little light for your tank, or the wrong spectrum bulbs. It's hard to give a recommendation of lighting since each person has different preferences. I like T5 fluorescent because they are efficient and have very long bulb life. 6,500k is about the prefect spectrum for green plant growth. In my high light world I feel that 4- 54 watt T5s would be prefect for a 55 gallon, but I love fast plant growth, so take my advice with a grain of salt.

My plant tanks are non-discus and I use lots of co2/light for maximum growth and let my algae crew takes care of any excess algae growth that may occur. To start to get rid of your algae problem I suggest you get an algae squad together. My favorites in order of effectiveness are: Amano Shrimp (In large numbers if possible), Siamese algae sharks (not Chinese), Rosy Barbs, Ottos, Busynose plecos, etc. There are many more choices of algae fish and each has there different niche. Such as Ottos are good for cleaning smaller leaves of spot algea and SAS's love to eat hair algae. Another tip to help you rid of that algea problem is to take your excel and put it into a syringe and spot treat the algae. You can do this directly (underwater) on the algae and in a day or so the algae will be dead. Overdosing excel can also help algae problems but I suggest you see how your fish react to it first.

Back to your questions, yes you do need to add some type of fertilizer usually either a substrate based one with PMDD or just nutrients like flourish. The substrate nutrients can supply the main nutes and the PMDD (poor man's dosing drops) add the trace minerals. Your fish will add to the nutrients in the tank so having the test kit will let you know when you should change out the tank water and replace the nutrients. Other people use a method which is called EI, I think. It is basically an overdose of all plant nutrients then a big 90%+ water change is done weekly to make sure nothing builds up too high. The benefit of this method is that you don't really have to test what nutrients are lacking in your water since you are replacing all of it weekly. I would get the algea and plants in order first and then move on to the discus since either plants or discus need priority and it is hard to do both properly at the same time. Another thing is usually Discus need to be in groups of 6 or more to be comfortable so 2 or 3 may not work. A pair of breeding discus may be the ticket for you since they don't mind being kept in small numbers when they pair up. Some of the sponsors on this board can help you getting a pair of discus, such as WV discus.

Good luck and I'm sure if I misspoke in my guide somebody more knowledgeable than me will come to your rescue (the wonders of simply).

Alex
HTH

[chhabi19]

Thanks Alex.

-I will do the spot algae treatment (with syringe) like you suggested.
-I am waiting for one of the fish store nearby to get Siamese Algae Eater
-Regarding test kit, I currently have kit for only Ph and Ammonia. I do plan to buy others. I saw 5-in-1 test strips. It says it will measure hardness (among others). Do you know anything about it? Do I need separate kits for Gh and Kh?

Thanks in advance.

[underwaterforest]

The KH test it good since it lets know what the relative buffering capacity of your tap water along with the change in KH letting you know how much co2 your water has absorbed. I use one of the color change inverted bell vials that sit on the inside of you aquarium and it varies from blue to green (blue=too little co2, green=enough co2). They work great and let you know when to bump up the Co2 or even when the Co2 is too high, the color will turn to yellow. The co2 test vial I use is made by red sea and has lasted for many years.
Here is a link to the one I use-
http://www.thatpetplace.com/pet/prod/207617/product.web

You can get the test strips as a relative test, but they aren't as accurate as the liquid chemical tests, the API liquid test kits are generally pretty good. The GH test will let you know what types of plants will grow good in your aquarium since some plants like very soft=low GH water.

If you choose to go the route of just adding fertilizers to what is being used up you will need the iron test, nitrate (nitrogen), Phosphorous and Potassium. If you choose the other route the EI index way of fertilizing you can do without the test kits, that being said it is the way I dose my aquariums. Here is a link that show relatively what the EI system is:
http://www.theplantedtank.co.uk/EI.htm

On the fertilizer end of things you can create your own fertilizers very cheaply from base chemicals or just buy pre made ones. I like the seachem flourish series for the pre made aquarium ferts, but they are much more expensive that the DIY ones. They also make a line of gravel fertilizer inserts which can help feed your plants from roots which some plants prefer to general dosing.HTH

Alex

[chhabi19]

Alex, it's a dumb question. I should be submerging the Red Sea CO2 Indicator in the water, right?

[underwaterforest]

Yes, you place the indicator about 4 inches from the top of the tank. Its like the old diving bells and it just measures the dissolved gases in the aquarium water.